Monday, February 15^th, 2021
A weekday e-mailer from
Matt Matthews
 
To Members and Friends of 
First Presbyterian Church
Champaign, Illinois
 
Friends,
 
I begin today with fiction. News follows. Shrove Tuesday, as you know, is the feasting/party day before the weighty truth of Ash Wednesday.
 
Everyone is welcomed to a “drive-by” imposition of ashes from noon to 1:00 p.m. on Ash Wednesday, February 17^th. Those who feel safe driving through the alley will, leaning through open car windows, receive ashes imposed upon their foreheads. Matt will be double-masked and will sanitize a gloved hand between congregants. While everyone is warmly invited to drive by, if you are at-risk or otherwise feel unsafe, please stay at home. Come at your own risk. We’ll be as safe as is humanly possible. Why ashes? They remind us who and whose we are. We will gather for a live Zoom service that evening at 7 p.m. led by Eric Corbin.
 
* * *
 
A Mostly True Account of 
A Family Trip to Texas
 
A short story of fiction for the Eve of Shrove Tuesday
by Matt Matthews
 
               John Mark, our youngest kid, is used to hand-me-downs and has always had to claw for the spot light. I’ve admired how he’s grabbed it, mainly by way of his winsome smile, which he uses like a chainsaw, and his humor. Often his two older brothers get the attention. Joseph is in college and Benjamin is in tenth grade. John Mark, almost fourteen, is in eighth. He’s outgrown melting down into tears when he doesn’t get what he wants, and he’s too smart to pick fights with his much larger and sometime humorless sibs because they can beat the pudding out of him and often do. His mom and I operate more and more on parental autopilot these days. We let our three sons work it out for themselves, which is a more politically correct way of saying, “May the best son win.” John Mark ends up on top about a third of the time, so there’s no need for me to worry, but sometimes I do. 
            Because I’m a father and he’s the youngest, I do worry. I was particularly mindful of John Mark feeling left out on our trip to the Texas in-laws. Joseph remained at college, but the younger two and my wife and I pasted on smiles for the thousand mile drive this spring break. I wanted to do my part in letting John Mark shine. Some fathers make such calculations. I’m sure the saying that “I love my kids uniquely not equally” is nonsensical to the kid holding the short end of the stick. Some fathers ponder such disparity. Others keep up with basketball scores. 
            On the arduous trek across mile after mile of interstate blandness, I feared Ben would hog the spot light and John Mark would have no choice—again—but to hug the shadows. Benjamin, at sixteen and in the final stages of his driving instruction, would be behind the wheel a significant portion of our 34-hour round-trip passage from South Carolina. John Mark would be off my radar during much of this marathon. While Ben managed driving duties, I’d be sitting shotgun making Zen-like observations about spent tread in the roadway and various other hazards posed by dozing truckers, the legally blind, and other vehicular maniacs. Calmly, I’d be offering gentle encouragement for my son to stay between the lines despite video-gamesque obstacles while maintaining interstate speeds approaching mach one.
            The second reason I thought John Mark might be shoved to the side was that Ben brought guitars and his mandolin and practically vibrated with eagerness to jam with Uncle Alan, show off his developing skills, and learn a few new licks. John Mark is musical but is not the musical fanatic Ben is blossoming into. I imagined JM might find himself on the outside of that circle.
            We got to Texas in one piece physically at four o’clock on Monday afternoon, an hour early. Benjamin and I had white line fever. I fell into the hammock on the porch outside and skidded hard into a nap. I awoke to brother-in-law Alan standing above me with his son Jake in his arms. “There’s your Uncle Matt,” Alan said gently. 
            “Your favorite uncle,” I chimed in sleepily. 
            Jake smiled then squirmed to go back inside. My glasses had fallen off, so color and light were muted, and everything blurred at the edges. I was left alone with the purpling twilight sky. Before I struggled for the hammock’s release, I contented myself with the chirping of what I reckoned to be warblers or titmice, yellows and grays flaring in and out of the birdfeeder.
            I should have taken this serene moment as invitation to relax my hyped, fatherly protection. It wasn’t my job to make everyone enjoy this trip. But the lines often blur between what I do and do not have control over, and worry is a form of power that I often abuse. I should have known that John Mark didn’t need me, at least not for that. John Mark would fend for himself winningly, which, of course, he did.      
            He proved that in a big way on our trip home. 
            Since it was only one hour out of the way, we stopped in New Orleans. I wanted my boys to be exposed to live Dixie Land music. I say exposed because I didn’t want them just to hear it or see it. A DVD at home would suffice if that were the case. I wanted them to be there. I wanted them to soak it in. Ben is in the high school jazz band, and when he’s not playing guitar, he’s in the alto sax line. John Mark, much less interested in his middle school band, plays clarinet; at home he plays around on the piano. I wanted these guys to see jazz up close. Preservation Hall would be the perfect place.
            Leroy Jones, the night’s band leader, sang and beamed an infectious smile when he wasn’t blowing his dulled, bronze-colored trumpet. He sang without a mic. An ancient man on tenor sax played buttery smooth riffs and smiled like a kid as the crowd clapped and hooted after each solo. A young white woman played piano and held her own during her adequate solos. When the smiling Jones lifted his trumpet, he let us have it like machine gun fire and the mournful trombone followed with a kind of healing that made us beam and sway.
            Most of us could see the front door that entered into the hallway stage right. Most of us, then, could also see the young cop when he entered. He chatted amiably with the staff who waited the door. At first, I thought it was just a drop-in visit on a beat that needed a dose of good music. If I were a cop I’d stop here as often as I could. But the mellow hippies at the door were getting antsy. And the way he spun his silver handcuffs around his finger made me wonder if something was going down. 
            As the band soaked up the applause for Whenever You’re Lonesome, the lady at the door crept into the spot light and whispered to the drummer. He raised his eyebrows, leaned forward and whispered a few words to the bandleader, then got up and left for the hall. He stood mainly out of sight while I watched the cop apologetically put the cuffs on and lead his bowed shadow out. Meanwhile the lady on trombone spoke quietly with the hippies at the door as if to say, Really? A note was passed to Leroy Jones. He read it twice, like a man who needed glasses, handed it back, then smiled to the audience. 
            “It seems we have lost our drummer,” he said. 
            Everybody broke up. 
            “Thanks to Facebook, the police always know where we are. And it’s difficult to hide when you’re playing a gig at Preservation Hall.”
            They finished with two more songs, and while the drummer was good and was missed, there was nothing incomplete about this deeply heartfelt music.
 
            We lingered without speaking in the few shops still open near the Cathedral. On Decatur, I bought a dozen beads and a box of Café Du Monde beignet mix. John Mark took the black plastic bag and twirled it clockwise and counter-clockwise around his hand like the cop did with his silver cuffs. Busloads of drunken young adults stumbled towards Bourbon Street. We stood back and watched. 
            On the mile-long walk from the French Quarter to our hotel in the Warehouse District, Rachel who is not directionally brave, pointed down a dark side street. It’ll be quicker if we go this way, she said. Besides, who wanted to go back the way we came? We’d see new things by going home another way. This logic made sense, but the narrow road opened like a hole in the sagging building facades around it. The wise men came to mind. They went home another way after their visit to the manger. But their detour was designed to take them out of harm’s way, not into it. This dark street looked like a get-into-trouble-free card. Perhaps we should have known better. Heads still nodding with music, we obediently followed my wife. It was just chilly enough that we had to walk briskly to stay warm. We launched off the curb and followed Rachel like lemmings across Canal into the yawning shadow of this nondescript side street. The dark windows may have concealed eyes.
            I took up the rear mainly because to walk faster would have required speeding up the sound track still playing in my head. At midblock a thin man charged from a doorway. He screeched at us, his eyes riveted on Rachel. He shoved her backwards into Ben. Like a linebacker, Ben caught her in his arms and steadied her back onto her feet. I guessed that part of him was the man who wanted to step between her and the yelling skinny man; another part of Ben just stood there wanting his mother—the adult, after all—to defend him. Despite his sized twelve shoes, he was still a child. 
            I stood frozen ten paces behind them, frozen and watching. I couldn’t believe what was happening. This was a dark night and a darker street. I should have known better. We stood in a ragged line. Rachel up front, Ben close behind, then John Mark, then me rooted into the sidewalk farthest from the action. The skinny man may have been on drugs or scared or both. He wasn’t a professional or he would have done his damage, taken what he wanted, and been halfway gone by now. He was wiry-thin, possibly strong, and raving, spittle arching from behind yellowed teeth. He could have been sixteen or sixty. Adrenaline and violence obscure time, age, perspective. “Hey, hey, hey” he shouted to Rachel. “Give me your purse.”
            My brain lurched into gear even though my body remained frozen. I wanted to point out that my wife wasn’t even carrying a purse. Oddly, a primordial part of my brain counseled to keep quiet lest his vehemence shift from her to me. 
            “Give it to me laaa-dy.”
            The force of his words punched Rachel backwards. Each word was an inch.
            “Hey!” somebody growled. 
            I looked around expecting to see a circle of them emerging from the walls to finish the job the skinny man had started. That it was John Mark’s voice upped the alarms going off in my body. John Mark’s voice? John Mark? Nothing was computing.
            The skinny man whirled from Rachel to our fragile, youngest child.
            “Yeah you,” John Mark shouted. He jabbed the air with the forefinger of his left hand. “I’m talking to you.” He twirled his plastic bag around his right fist. 
            The skinny man took a stagger-step to John Mark, but John Marked closed the distance with two quicker, smaller steps. He raised the bag over his head like a sling and swung it towards the man’s angry face. The bag and possibly the corner of the 28-ounce box of beignet mix glanced off the man’s upper cheek into his right eye socket. He winced. I winced. Unblinking, John Mark swung again as the man stumbled sideways off the stone curb. John Mark stepped down and spun the bag above his head for a third strike. 
            The box of beignet mix had broken open. Wheat and barley flour plumed in the air like a dirty bomb. The now-astonished man hit the damp pavement and scrabbled on his injured side as John Mark leaned forward for a fourth, forceful blow. Again, he found his mark. Clots of flour spurted out, blinding the man, choking him. Flour, buttermilk, salt, sugar, baking soda, and artificial flavoring bloomed upwards. The night air suddenly smelled like Shrove Tuesday. The man choked and whimpered. Pallid, wretched, ill, he crossed his raised arms for protection. Like a wounded white leopard, he could still pounce. What was I waiting for? Why was I still frozen? He could still hurt us, or worse.
            By now something exploded from my chest and I could finally move. I grabbed John Mark, who had hit the man two more times, and screamed to the others, “Run!”
            I pulled John Mark away, but he struggled against me, like he didn’t want to go, like he had started a job that he wanted to finish. I pulled harder. He dropped the bag and we sprinted to catch up with the others. 
            In another world around the nearest corner, an upscale boutique hotel opened into a crowded patio restaurant. Gas lamps lit the wrought iron, the patterned brick sidewalks, and the colorful first floor flowerboxes. Potted palms guarded the arched doorway. Tuxedoed doormen and patrons looked our way.
            “We’ve been robbed,” Rachel blubbered, though that wasn’t true at all. We had been attacked but nothing had been taken except a box of beignets and a wad of one-dozen colored, plastic beads. And they weren’t exactly taken, so much as used in our defense. They were the detritus of battle, not the booty of a successful robbery.
            “Where’s John Mark?” Rachel choked, hoarsely, looking wide-eyed over my shoulder. It seemed impossible, but her face blanched an even whiter shade of pale.
            I had released my grip on his shirt. I turned and he wasn’t behind me. Ben and I bolted instinctively for the corner. When we rounded a dead light pole into the ominous dark, we stopped. John Mark was walking towards us—sauntering, really—down the center of the street. He was wearing that smile of his, the smile that I’ll never underestimate again. Wadded in his right hand he held that black, plastic bag. As he stepped into the light, and the burly doormen bumped to a stop behind us, he lifted the bag like Excalibur. The last of the beignet mix filtered like Louisiana voodoo powder to the street.
            “Can you believe it?” John Mark said. “That guy almost got away with our beads.”
 
# # #
 
 
NEWS, et cetera . . .
 
Please sign up for the book study. (Call the office.) It’s a serious topic, but I hope we’re going to have fun. Is that all right? To have fun talking about serious stuff? I hope so. There’s nothing wrong about holy laughter. See you at the book study.
 
BOOK STUDY!  You are invited to a congregation-wide four session book study on race.

• WHAT? Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (One World, 2015). A father talks to his fifteen-year-old son about the realities of inhabiting a black body.
• WHEN?  Thursdays, February 18 and 25 and March 4 and 11 at 11:00am to 12:00 noon. 
• HOW? Sign up by emailing or calling Patty Farthing in the church office. We will meet on-line via Zoom. 217.356.7238 /  Patty@firstpres.church . Borrow books from our public library in paper, digital or audio form. 
• WHO? Everyone in our congregation and community is invited. Pastor Matt Matthews will facilitate. Our Compassion, Peace, and Justice Committee/ Spiritual Formation Committee will host.             
• WHY? Jesus asks us to love “the other. A first step is listening to understand “the other”.

 
* * *

In-person Worship begins on February 21^st at 10:15.  After careful discussion and prayerful deliberation, the COVID-19 team and the Session have recommended that we resume limited in-person weekly worship on the First Sunday of Lent, February 21^st at 10:15 a.m.  
 
For those of you who feel safe to attend, please pre-register by calling the church office at 217.356.7238. Registration will run from Monday morning to Thursday noon the week before each service. (We are preregistering not only as a means of contact-tracing, but also to keep attendance at or under fifty [50] people, including worship leaders and ushers. That is the limit prescribed by state public health guidelines.) 
 
Remember, your Session is doing everything it can to keep everyone safe during this season of pandemic. While the end may be in sight with local and statewide numbers trending downward, not everyone is vaccinated yet and Covid-19 is still deadly. Some experts guess our nationwide death toll due to Covid may total over 600,000 by later this Spring.
 
The best way to safeguard against getting Covid is to limit one’s exposure to it and to get vaccinated; while we have prepared as safe a worship environment as possible, and all participants will be required to check in, wear masks at all times, and sit at a distance of six feet from other families, we cannot guarantee that somebody won’t get sick. Those who come to worship come at their own risk.
 
These in-person services will be, essentially, services of welcome, scripture, prayer, and preaching. These brief—40-minutes, or less—services will include no spoken liturgy, no congregational singing, and no choir. The preacher will speak from behind a plexiglass barrier. There will be no indoor fellowship, and no coffee or food service before or after the service.
 
This may not sound like a very welcoming or, even, friendly invitation, does it? You know what I mean. So, make wise decisions for you and your family, stay away if you are high risk or don’t feel well, and know that I look forward to “seeing” some of you online at 9:00 a.m. on Sunday (FirstPres.Live), and others of you face to face at 10:15 a.m. 
 
God is good.
  
* * *
 
Holy God, walk with us through these cold, dark days, 
even as we dream of the greening of our parks,
the thawing of our clenched lives,
into the springtime of your love.
 
From ashes to empty tombs,
guide our every step, faltering, 
save for your
redeeming
grace.
 
A
M
E
N
 
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Much, much love to you all.
 
Matt Matthews
Cell: 864.386.9138
Matt@FirstPres.Church